


Split Skin

by rabidbinbadger



Series: Fragments [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Mark of Cain, Post-Season/Series 10, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:26:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5226881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidbinbadger/pseuds/rabidbinbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean dreams, it's of cracked knuckles and broken bones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Split Skin

Dean’s knuckles drive into Cas’s face, and for the first time ever, they leave a mark. Blood wells and flows from split skin. The twinge of guilt is smothered in a heady rush of power. All his life he’s spent punching up, at things bigger and badder than he is.

Now he’s punching across, down, even. ‘Cause Cas ain’t fighting back. Dean is in control here, can lunge and dig and smash with impunity.

“Get used to this,” the Mark whispers seductively. “This is the future. All that rage and fury and you can finally let it out on level ground, or less than level ground, if you want.

“Just relax. I’m here, diffusing through you like blood in the water. Soon, Dean, soon we’ll be unstoppable.”

Cas is on the floor, and he’s still not fighting back. Dean has an angel blade raised, and he knows he could end this now.

So he does.

He slams the blade down, and Cas sparks and gutters, charcoaled wings burst out on the ground.

That, that’s not how it happened.

Dean bursts back to consciousness, gasping and panting. He can feel the phantom ache in his knuckles, reflexively checks for broken skin.

Nothing.

The Mark isn’t whispering to him now, it’s gone. Long gone, but he can’t shake the emotions of the dream – the memory, until the very last moments.

“Dean?”

Cas is standing in the doorway, looking worried, and no. Dean can’t deal with this right now. The dying embers of his dream are licking around his thoughts, tainting them, and all that un-channelled, unacknowledged feeling he has for Cas needs to go somewhere, and he won’t let it go where it wants, won’t let it express itself through soft touch and gentle words, so it tries to reroute to his fists instead but he can’t, he won’t.

Not again.

He jumps to his feet, pushes past Cas, even though there’s space enough between him and the doorframe not to have to. Just because, for some tactile touch, for some small violence to stop the big one spilling out.

He runs to sanctuary, and Cas takes the hint, doesn’t follow.

He leaves Dean alone in the Impala, hands clenched white around the steering wheel, as he tries to piece himself back together, bit by bit.

The Mark might be gone, but the trauma it left behind, the scars it carved into him, they aren’t going away any time soon.

**Author's Note:**

> [Rebloggable link](http://rabidbinbadger.tumblr.com/post/132891471376/split-skin)


End file.
